specify cqlsh output timezone

Question

I have a table in cassandra with a datatype of timestamp. i am using cqlsh to get data out of the database and wanted to change the output format for how my timestamp column output looks like. I researched around and found that i can change the timestamp output format by making changes to the following file:

• ~/.cassandra/cqlshrc

But i learnt that the only change i can make is the time elements, i cannot make the output to display my timestamps in a different timezone(say UTC). It always displays the timestamps in my local timezone.

I wanted to know if there is a way i could make cqlsh display timestamp in my desired time zone, or atleast in UTC zone.
Any help or pointers are appreciated.

I'm using the following versions:
cqlsh 4.1.1 | Cassandra 2.0.6 | CQL spec 3.1.1

Thanks

Answer 1

You can change your environment variable to get show timezone:

TZ=America/Los_Angeles cqlsh -k mpj `hostname` -e 'select time from userbehavior limit 3'

 time
--------------------------
 2015-02-15 21:17:03-0800
 2015-02-15 18:16:21-0800
 2015-02-15 00:04:52-0800

(3 rows)

and:

TZ=UTC cqlsh -k mpj `hostname` -e 'select time from userbehavior limit 3'

 time
--------------------------
 2015-02-16 05:17:03+0000
 2015-02-16 02:16:21+0000
 2015-02-15 08:04:52+0000

(3 rows)

Answer 2

The cqlshrc timeout option configures the output format of database objects using Python strftime syntax according to http://www.datastax.com/documentation/cql/3.1/cql/cql_reference/cqlsh.html. I haven't verified that these strftime directives work, but if you're willing to experiment try using the strftime() directive %z (UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM and %Z (time zone name). See https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior.

Answer 3

Thanks for the question. Here is just an alternative way, which is do some date operation after you fetch the data using "datetime.timedelta()". You can calculate the offset time from UTC, and then do a date adjust. Just for your reference.

>>> import datetime 
>>> offset = -10 # in hours
>>> original = '08/19/2015 10:59' 
>>> adjusted = datetime.datetime.strptime(original, '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M') + datetime.timedelta(hours=offset) 
>>> print adjusted.strftime('%m/%d/%Y %H:%M') 
    08/19/2015 00:59

Answer 4

You can change default timezone of local cqlsh by editing ~/.cassandra/cqlshrc

Ex :

[ui] TZ = IST